Do brute trashcans leach stuff?

[ILikeFish!]

I have a brute trash can that i use to keep top of water in, when i put water in the bucket the water is at 0 TDS but after a few days it goes to 1 TDS. Is the bucket leaching something into the water?

 

[ryanjohn1]

They are allegedly food safe.

 

[Labridaedicted]

Eventually everything will start to leach materials into water as it breaks down. That's why water jugs have expiration dates. That being said, with the limited amount of time we keep liquid in there, it will be a negligible amount. I wouldn't worry about it. Many of us have been using them for decades with no ill effects.

 

[Trixter227]

Doesnt 0TDS RODI water pull ions and such from the air? So if the lid isn't "airtight" it can take in material from the air.
Hopefuly someone will chime in and sound more scientific.

 

[Trixter227]

Sorry its so long but this was from a post about drinking RODI water. The first paragraph explains it pretty well.

Sorry folks, but drinking deionized water in and of itself will not hurt you in the slightest. The idea behind this is an inappropriate extrapolation from laboratory science. Extremely pure water has a large capacity to dissolve ions from various containers that it's put into, which is why if one puts 18.3 megaohm laboratory grade water into a glass vessel, the resistivity will quickly drop into the 0.5-1.0 megaohm range. That's partly from the adsorption of CO2 in the air, but also dissolution of sodium and silica from the vessel walls itself. And if you keep highly pure water in a 316 stainless steel system that's not "passivated", you will get corrosion of the steel walls as a very tiny amount of it dissolves into the water (this is called "rouging").

These effects have led some to inappropriately assume that highly purified water is "corrosive" and that it will remove minerals from your body as they dissolve into the water if you drink it. There is a rather serious logical problem with this assertion, which is that your stomach contains a massive amount of electrolytes compared to what is required to make highly pure water into "normal" water. It's true that if you only drank highly purified water and your food was deficient in minerals, then at some point you might develop a mineral deficiency. This is often cited as evidence that drinking highly purified water is "bad for you". What alarmist websites that espouse this dreck aren't telling you is that you would likely develop the same mineral deficiency regardless of whether you were drinking "normal" water or highly purified water. And for the average person in developed countries, the vast majority of your daily mineral intact is from food, not water.

However, there are several reasons not to drink water from your average hobbyist's RODI system, though it has nothing to do with the water that's produced being inherently bad for you. The first is taste - a lot of what we perceive to be "good tasting water" comes from the minerals that are in it. Highly purified water tends to taste "flat". This is why, btw, that bottled water companies use RODI systems to purify the municipal sources of water that they use, then add sodium, calcium and magnesium salts back into it before they bottle it. The second reason not to drink hobbyist-produced RODI water has to do with sterility. Municipal sources add chlorine/chloramine to water for a reason, and that's to prevent you from getting a bunch of live pseudomonas and escherichia (among other genuses) when you get a drink of water from the sink. In a hobbyist's RODI system, the carbon blocks remove the chlorine/chloramine, so the rest of the system downstream from the pretreatment stage can definitely grow several types of problematic bacteria that you wouldn't want to drink.

That's why RODI systems that are used for manufacturing beverage products have 2 additional controls in the system, which are UV sterilization and ultrafiltration. These systems are also regularly sterilized with peroxide-based sterilants to prevent the growth of biofilms.

Bottom line - if you want to use RODI in an application were it will be heated/boiled, there's no reason not to. But don't drink it straight from your RODI system without adding in some additional components to ensure its microbiological safety.

 

[Dburr1014]

RODI will absolutely pull stuff from the air. It's literally missing everything like minerals and ions. It starts to act like a magnet and pulls in everything it can.

 

[jda]

If you ever had saltwater or something else in the brute, it will always measure some sort of TDS, at least for a while. Measure the output from your RODI and don't worry about this.

 

[jason2459]

Even if it does people have been using brute cans for decades. It's fine.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I have a brute trash can that i use to keep top of water in, when i put water in the bucket the water is at 0 TDS but after a few days it goes to 1 TDS. Is the bucket leaching something into the water?

I always use white Rubbermaid products as those are marketed as food safe. In addition, you can see if it gets stained by anything pretty easily.

However, Randy Holmes-Farley does confirm that the gray ones are food safe, so then would be reef safe by most accounts.

Are brute trash cans really chemically safe?

Hi everyone, I read in many forums (this included) that people use BRUTE Trash Cans for their mixing station. So I went ahead and bought 2 55gal ones, and made a mixing station. Months later.. Wondering around on the internet, I stepped on some information about the use of different plastics...

www.reef2reef.com

Jay

 

[ILikeFish!]

If you ever had saltwater or something else in the brute, it will always measure some sort of TDS, at least for a while. Measure the output from your RODI and don't worry about this.

So i should just use the rodi water instead of remaking it whenever it gets to 1 tds?

 

[CBonito]

Sorry its so long but this was from a post about drinking RODI water. The first paragraph explains it pretty well.

And people get mad at the dog for drinking out of the toilet.

 

[homer1475]

So i should just use the rodi water instead of remaking it whenever it gets to 1 tds?

Absolutely fine to use.

RO/DI is like a sponge, it will soak up anything in the air, which will give you a TDS reading if not kept air tight.

Brute's have been used for decades in the hobby. They are perfectly safe to use. I've been using the same ones for the better part of 20 years.

 

[nereefpat]

To be clear, the 1 TDS is just dust or something from the air that would eventually get in your tank anyway.

 

[InsaneClownFish]

I’ve started to move away from the Brutes simply because the insides tend to get frayed over time.

 

[bshonesy]

Doesnt 0TDS RODI water pull ions and such from the air? So if the lid isn't "airtight" it can take in material from the air.
Hopefuly someone will chime in and sound more scientific.

I get where this is coming from, but water doesn’t “pull” things from the air in the way it’s being described by many in this thread. It’s true that gases will dissolve into solution in water, but remember this occurs at equilibrium. The only other thing going into to water are particulates like dust, but these are simply floating until they land on something, if they land on your ultra pure water they will dissolve or be suspended in it just the same as they would a toilet bowl of water. So to answer the question, no ultra pure water doesn’t really “pull” things out of the air or containers anymore than tap water (to any significant amount. Once water hits a container it does lose some of its purity, but that’s more from residue, bacteria, etc than anything. Plastics aren’t solubilized by water, it would take an organic solvent and a strong one, something like chloroform to actually start pulling things out of the plastic.

 

[jason2459]

I’ve started to move away from the Brutes simply because the insides tend to get frayed over time.

Frayed? How? I used the same two brute cans for over ten years and they are still as smooth as when brand new.

Two brute gray trash cans, a blue slim jim, and some clear tote and never has the insides frayed on any of those.

 

[Reefer45C]

I've been using the blue 32 gallon brute recycle cans for sometime now... I have 0 tds going into the can but really never checked while in the can. But I can tell you I haven't seen any effects to make me think they're leaching and I have ran a couple ICP tests that don't show anything alarming. Maybe I should check!?

 

[nereefpat]

Plastics aren’t solubilized by water, it would take an organic solvent and a strong one, something like chloroform to actually start pulling things out of the plastic.

This isn't necessarily true. There are plastics that are not safe for food or drinking water because they release chemicals into water. PVC is a good example.

 

[jda]

I read a lot about plastics a while back. Cheap ones can release tin forever. Good ones and certian types like the PEs do not release anything. Some can release petroleum byproducts.

There are likely reefing pumps, dosers, etc, that are made out of too cheap of plastic that release tin into the tank - we all know the brands but they are super cheap out of China. Some 5 gallon bucks also appear to release tin into the water.